First in that gray early morning came two old flags, so torn by shot and shell that there was hardly enough left of them to tell whether the State flag was that of Massachusetts or Virginia.  And behind these came scant three hundred men.  All the rest were sleeping between Washington and Richmond, some on almost every battle-field.  The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain.  Only gun-barrel and bayonet were bright.  And the men were scarred and tired and foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches.  For these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the need was greatest.  I do not suppose that one of them could have delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism.  They were trained not to talk, but to obey orders.  But they had stood in the “bloody angle” at Spottsylvania all day and all night; and in the gray dawn of the next morning, when strength and courage are always at ebb, faint and exhausted, their last cartridge shot away, had sprung forward at the command of their colonel to make a last desperate, forlorn defence with the bayonet against the advancing enemy.  Numbers do not count against men like these.  What made them such invincible heroes?  It was mainly the resolute will and long training to obey orders.  A Christian should never forget that he is a soldier in the army of the Lord of Hosts; that enlistment is easy and quickly accomplished; but that the training is long, and that he must learn, above all, to “endure hardness.”

And so, my brothers, I beg of you to preach a heroic Christianity, for if there ever was a heroic religion it is ours.  If you offer merely free transportation to a future heaven of delight on “flowery beds of ease,” you will enlist only the coward and the sluggard.  But everyone who has a drop of strong old Norse blood in his veins will prefer a heathen Valhalla, though builded in hell, to such a heaven.  And his Norse instincts will be nearer truth than your counterfeit of a debased Christianity.  But preach the city of God’s righteousness on earth and now among men, and call on every heroic soul to take sides with God against sin within himself and the evil and misery all around him.  There is an almost infinite amount of strength, endurance, and heroism in this “slow-witted but long-winded” human race waiting to leap up at the appeal to fight once more and win a victory after repeated defeats before the sun goes down.  Appeal to this and point to the great “captain of our salvation made perfect through sufferings,” and every man that is of the truth will hear in your voice the call of the Master and King.  You will not be disappointed, but among the publicans and fishermen of America you will find heroic souls, who will leave all to follow, as faithfully and unflinchingly as those from the shores of Galilee.

And what of faith?  Faith is the personal attachment of a soul to such a leader.  Fortunately the Bible contains a scientific monograph on this subject.  I refer, of course, to the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews.  And the whole result is summed up in a few words of the thirteenth verse.  The great heroes, like Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, “saw the promises afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”